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Chris Alexander, the Conservative candidate for Ajax-Pickering, campaigns at a GO station in Ajax. (TONDA MACCHARLES / TORONTO STAR)

He is expected to talk up his government’s measures to boost legal immigration with an eye on spotlighting aspiring Conservative candidates, and promoting one star’s chances of an upset victory.

This is a riding the Conservatives dearly want to snatch from the Liberals.

Already, three cabinet ministers marched through in the first 10 days of the campaign to promote rookie Conservative Chris Alexander.

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Alexander, 42, is an Oxford-educated former diplomat. He served as Canadian ambassador and the UN’s deputy special representative in Afghanistan, and is now running hard against Mark Holland, the incumbent Liberal MP and public safety critic.

The brash Holland, 36, led the Liberal charge in support of the long-gun registry and railed against the Conservatives’ “tough on crime” policies and G20 spending.

He is a ferocious burr under the government’s saddle in Question Period.

His defeat would be a political trophy for the Conservatives.

University of Toronto political scientist Stephen Clarkson, who chronicled the era of Trudeau liberalism and the dominance in Canadian politics of the Liberal party’s “Big Red Machine,” says the Alexander-Holland race is a key one to watch in the battle for Greater Toronto.

“If the Conservatives penetrate Toronto, they will have their majority.”

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives eyed the blond, blue-eyed Alexander to run.

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Alexander says he spoke to the Liberals on Afghanistan when he returned in 2009, but only as a political courtesy.

“I knew where I fit.”

Clarkson says it’s a sign the Canadian political centre has shifted under Harper.

“The fact they recruited Chris Alexander is a sign they are doing really well among the young urban elite.”

But Clarkson stressed it is still very much an “open question” whether the Conservative party can break through because “campaigns do very much matter.”

Much, he says, will depend on which national leader is perceived to have momentum in the weeks ahead, and which wins favourable media coverage as a “front-runner.”

Wednesday’s Conservative rally is about showing that momentum as the national campaigns vie for headlines in the “air war” — especially heading into the nationally televised debates next week.

Also in the Conservative arsenal against Holland — though apparently unaffiliated with the party — is a sympathetic anti-gun control lobby.

Gun owners across the country are pouring thousands of dollars — nearly $10,000 so far, acknowledged Alexander — into his effort to defeat Holland, at $39.10 a pop.

Alexander says it is a relatively small amount that pales in comparison to the $130,000 to $150,000 he has raised since 2009 in his effort to canvass the riding and reach out to voters.

Although Alexander says websites like canadiangunnutz.com and turfmholland.ca are not affiliated with his campaign, he welcomes the contribution of “all Canadians” because he, too, believes the long-gun registry is bad policy.

Holland does not outright accuse Alexander of unfair play, but says Alexander “has to answer for” the outside money coming in to aid his campaign.

Holland shrugs it off, and insists votes here come down to the local ground game, and on that, he believes he has an advantage.

Born and raised in Pickering, Holland has worked the suburban single-family homes and high-rise apartment buildings for nine campaigns in 15 years — races for seats on the school board, the municipal and regional council, for the Liberal nomination, and for the federal seat that he’s held since 2004.

He’s got an easy manner at the door.

“Hello, yes I remember you, you helped us so much,” says Maria Koeller, a home-care worker who answers the door to Holland. His office helped her swiftly replace a stolen passport.

One by one, their campaign teams go down lists of committed supporters — lists that are ever-changing in a riding that is sprawling northward, where sub-division developments are creeping into more rural townships.

“It’s nothing personal,” Alexander responds to a voter who remarks that Holland is a hard worker.

But the rookie is still honing his retail political skills. Shaking hands in the pre-dawn darkness with busy commuters trying to make the GO train downtown is a tricky bid for support. It’s a blur of faces as voters rush by.

“I’m glad you’re running,” says a Conservative commuter, Ed Zak, who works at Scotiabank downtown. “You’ve got a good reputation.” But Zak confides afterward Alexander has got his work cut out for him because Holland has “established himself.”

Two other candidates are running but their campaigns are all but invisible. NDP candidate Jim Koppens, a butcher at Loblaws, says his campaign is running on a shoestring, with the long game being to build up an NDP riding association for the future.

The Green Party candidate is Mike Harilaid, described on the party’s website as a filmmaker who operates an experimental farm in Pickering.

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